The History Of Network Marketing

Network Marketing has been around for over 50 years. In 1934 California
Vitamin Company came up with a concept of Multi Level Marketing. This
company started out as a direct sales company signing up sales people
that would use the product for their personal use and sell to it to
their family and friends. In the process they would earn an extra $50
per month which was a substantial income at that time. Their friends and
relatives not only liked the product but they started to realise that
they could benefit financially themselves by buying the product at the
wholesale price and in turn selling it to others.

In 1943,
California Vitamins changed their name to Nutralite Corporation which
implemented the first true Multi Level Marketing compensation plan.
Everyone involved in the company got paid on multiple levels of sales
made.

In 1949, Jay Van Andle and Richard Marvin DeVoss joined
Nutralite Corporation as Members and for the next ten years the company
grew and prospered. They regarded conventional sales jobs as unfair -
being paid only once for the work that they did even when the company
continued to make a profit from their labours for many years afterwards.
They believed that they should be paid relative to the benefit the
company continued to get from their original work. In 1959 Jay and
Richard decided to go in a different direction and start their own Multi
Level Company called Amway.

In 1975, US consumer protection
agency Federal Trade Commission decided to take Amway to court because
they thought that Amway was involved in a Pyramid Scheme. A pyramid
scheme is when you sell a system without a product. A number of
different pyramid schemes sprang up with the advent of MLM.

Because
Amway was the biggest MLM distribution company at the time, the Federal
Trade Commission decided to make an example of them to prove that Amway
was involved in an illegal business. For four years Amway fought in
the courts to prove that MLM was a legitimate business finally winning
the case in1979. This paved the way for many more MLM companies to enter
the industry.

In the early Eighties the Multi Level Marketing
term was replaced by Network Marketing. Right now Network Marketing is
poised to become a giant that will out grow any other form of
conventional business. Currently it is the fastest growing method of
distribution in the world and now you have a ground floor opportunity to
grow your business and prosper in the years ahead.